Saturday, July 6, 2013

***This is a late-posting update that I started a month ago (since Louisa is just about 10 months old now). There are things that are out-of-date that I'm not changing because this is my version of a baby book. I'm trying to keep things as we knew them to be at the time (if that makes any sense.).***

Height: ???

Weight: 16 pounds, 6 oz. To give you a comparison, this is about what Alice weighed at 6 months old.

Clothing size: 3-6 months, still.

Medical: Louisa started physical therapy this month and promptly earned a referral for occupational therapy. She has a complete meltdown when you try to touch her feet. She'll go on tip toes, but woe to you if you try to make her place both feet entirely on the floor. She also dislikes going hand over hand and generally being made to do anything. She has screamed through every single PT session so far. OT will deal with her sensory issues so that PT can do their job of helping her with gross motor. So far PT has only been able to do sensory things with Louisa.

Food, the good: well, we have found one food Louisa will tolerate.... zucchini! Hooray for zucchini! Tim planted two mounds of zucchini in our garden to celebrate.

Food, the bad: we have to go really slow with zucchini. We first tried 2 oz a day. That was a disaster. We dropped to 1 oz, then 1 oz every other day and that seems to be okay. Eventually we will get her up to 1-1/2 oz every other day and then maybe attempt to move to every day.

Food, the ugly: Louisa didn't gain any weight for 6 weeks, according to the scale in the GI's office. I think she gained and lost the same 2 oz a few times. Still, she's pretty much stagnated. This likely means she will have to go back on overnight g tube feedings. We are attempting to raise the calorie concentration in her formula first, but last time we did that she started continuously dumping. She has had a few bottles of the new concentration now and I have to admit I am unimpressed. Dumping and retching. Yay. We'll give it a shot, though.

Favorite things: 60mL syringes. (File that one under "you know you're not in Kansas anymore when..."), her bunny snuggly blanket thing, pacifiers (which she finds and sticks in her mouth herself now), my lap - Lou still prefers my lap to anything else. I've surrendered to this and embraced not getting a whole lot done. At some point she'll be off and running and won't want the snuggles.

Milestones: Louisa is developing her pincer grasp. Specifically, she delights in pulling out Tim's chest hair. She can sit well now and has recently started putting her hands in front of her and rocking while sitting. She's managed to get one leg behind her, but gets royally ticked off because she is then stuck. She still has not really rolled over in either direction and she is nowhere near getting to sitting from lying down. She'll get there.

The other big milestone is that we moved Louisa to her crib. We had her in her cradle up until a few weeks ago, primarily because I was terrified of not having her right next to me.